DPR MP: Zelensky used a nationalists’ greeting in Babi Yar in disrespect of Holocaust victims

Donetsk, Aug 21 – DAN. Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky has shown disrespect towards the Holocaust victims as he used a greeting of Ukrainian Nazis, who took part in the genocide of the Jews, as he was visiting Babi Yar, a member of the DPR People’s Council Vladislav Berdicheskiy told DAN.

“Zelensky and the Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, visited Babi Yar, and again, as 70 years ago, a Bandera’s greeting sounded there: Slava Ukrayini! Heroyam slava! (Glory to Ukraine! Glory to Ukraine). Using the words of Nazi executioners to greet the Israeli leader is the height of cynicism, disrespect to the victims of the Ukrainian nationalism.

Berdicheskiy has also dismissed Zelensky’s allegations that the scale of the tragedy had been toned down in the Soviet Union. He said it is untrue as a memorial to the Babi Yar massacre had been installed at the times of the Soviet Union.

Babi Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of mass executions carried out by German forces and local Ukrainian collaborators during the WWII. It has become a world-known symbol of the Holocaust as well as the Auschwitz concentration camp. The number of victims killed in Babi Yar, by various estimations, might be as high as 200 thousand people. Mostly Jews, Gypsies, communists, members of the Komsomol and Soviet prisoners of war were executed there.

The phrase Glory to Ukraine! first appeared in different military formations in Ukraine at the beginning of the 20 century. By 1920’s is was widely used by Ukrainian nationalists. The response Glory to the heroes! appeared in the 1930s among members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and became an official slogan of Stepan Bandera’s OUN-B in April 1941.

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